Graphene batteries: Introduction and Market News - Page 44

A website named Getinews reported The first mass produced graphene-enhanced phone. It is supposedly intended for a 30,000 piece production, and will contain graphene smartphone touch screen, battery and thermal films. The phone's core technology is provided by the Chongqing Institute of Technology and the Chinese Academy of green intelligent Ningbo Institute of Material Technology and Engineering.

According to reports, the graphene phone has a better touch performance and longer standby time and better thermal performance. While graphene-enhanced touchscreens are not unheard of, graphene batteries a little more of a stretch so it should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

Canada-based Group NanoXplore announced that its new graphene production facility is in full operation. The new plant can produce up to 3 tonnes of graphene GNPs per year, the largest production capacity in Canada and the fifth largest in the world outside of China.

NanoXplore says that their unique process "gently and efficiently" creates pristine graphene from natural flake graphite without creating the crystalline defects that can limit performance. The company's process also functionalises the graphene material during production making subsequent mixing with a broad range of industrial materials simple and efficient. The company makes several standard grades of graphene and also derivative products such as a unique graphite-graphene composite suitable for anodes in Li-ion batteries.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed a single-step process to achieve 3D texturing of graphene and graphite, using a commercially available thermally activated shape-memory polymer substrate. 

Since crumpled graphene was shown to have modulated electrical and optical properties, finding methods to produce folded/crumpled graphene surfaces can be helpful for various applications, like electronics and biomaterials, electrodes for battery and supercapacitor applications, coating layers, omniphobic/anti-bacterial surfaces for advanced coating applications and more.

Canada-based Group NanoXplore announced that it finalized an agreement for a non-brokered private placement financing totaling $2.725M CDN ($2.18 million USD) in December, 2014. The investors are several Canadian individuals with strong backgrounds in chemical and industrial markets and successful records of building successful technology enterprises.

The graphene producer and application developers hopes that these new investors will provide more than just funds - also knowledge and connection in target markets. NanoXplore aims to use the money to accelerate their customer acquisition and sales efforts. The company has seen a strong interest in their products over the last year, especially for applications in smart textiles and Li-ion batteries, as well as lubricants, paints, and polymers.

Canadian Elcora Resources Corp. announced the beginning of sample testing for potential graphite clients, and started testing purified Elcora graphite for graphene, batteries and high-end expandable graphite.

The company plans to take several steps to reach their goals: reducing the particle size of the graphite to maintain crystal morphology and perform separations techniques to upgrade the graphite, pursuing contaminant removal methods, and testing expansion ratio, activation temperatures, surface area and performance in lithium ion battery applications and graphene preparation for quality testing. 

Researchers from the Korean Sungkyunkwan University announced the development of a sponge-like electrode material using graphene and a polymer that enables the assembly of a light and efficient graphene battery.

The electrode was made from porous graphene aerogel that was a result of combining alcohol and graphene. The graphene aerogel electrode material is easily compressed and highly durable, with about 90-99.9 percent of it filled with air and pores smaller than 100 nanometers that form a 3D web.

Talga has entered into a joint work program with Dresden University of Technology and the Max Planck Institute, to test and develop low cost bulk graphene production for supercapacitor and battery related applications.

This 12 month research program aims to test and demonstrate the company's low cost bulk graphene product for supercapacitor and other battery related applications. Professor Feng from Dresden University will head the joint work program alongside Professor Klaus Müllen at Max Planck. Both Professors Müllen chair research clusters within the €1 billion Graphene Flagship program.

Korean Scientist at the university of Yonsei in Seoul and the Korean Institute of Ceramic Engineering & Technology designed round graphene microparticles by spraying graphene oxide droplets into a hot solvent. This technique could pose a versatile and simple approach to making electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors with improved energy and power densities.

The researchers' particles comprise of graphene nanosheets radiating out from the center, an arrangement that increases the exposed surface area of the graphene and creates open nanochannels that can enhance charge transfer. The work was doen by passing an aqueous suspension of graphene oxide flakes through an ultrasonic nozzle, which uses sound waves to break the suspension into microdroplets. The scientists then sprayed the droplets downward into a 160° C mixture of organic solvent and ascorbic acid, a reducing agent. The hot mixture allows the graphene oxide to reduce to graphene sheets that cluster together. The water in the droplets evaporates and escapes toward the surface, which causes the unique arrangement of the nanosheets. 

A few days ago, Tesla announced the implementation of several improvements to their Roadster model, one of which involves an intriguing battery enhancement. Tesla claims to have identified a new cell technology that has 31% more energy than the original Roadster cell. Using this new cell, the company created a battery pack that delivers roughly 70kWh in the same package as the original battery.

Although graphene was not specifically mentioned in this statement, it does stand to reason as a Chinese website stated that the Roadster 3.0 "uses graphene in the production of the battery, which increases its energy storage capacity significantly. The battery range improves by 50% which enables the 3.0 version to travel 644 km on one charge".

University College London (UCL) has joined the EU's Graphene Flagship project to explore graphene applications and commercialization.

Four UCL departments (chemistry, chemical engineering, physics & astronomy and the London Centre for Nanotechnology) will take part in the Graphene Flagship’s work. The UCL scientists' work will focus on sheets of graphene in which about half of the carbon atoms are replaced with nitrogen ones. This changes the properties of the graphene, producing a web-like structure rather than a solid sheet, which gives it a much larger surface area. This structure modifies its electrical properties and can be good for a range of applications including batteries and catalysts.